Florida International University's Minority Biomedical Research Program strives to facilitate faculty and student research efforts by providing funds to: 1) enable students to become active participants, 2) augment University equipment purchases so that research efforts are not diluted by dependency on out-dated instruments, 3) support on-going University seminars and Distinguished Speaker Lectures, 4) increase the time available for faculty to devote to research, 5) foster a climate of interdisciplinary research collaboration and 6) encourage faculty efforts to obtain additional research support. Program subprojects include principal investigators from three colleges and five departments; two projects involve collaboration between principal investigators from different departments. These collaborative efforts stimulate not only intellectual interchange but also resource sharing.